Linked List: July 17, 2014

Thursday, 17 July 2014

Taligent and the Ignominious History of Apple/IBM Alliances ★

It somehow slipped my mind yesterday, but Bill Campbell’s departure made me recall Taligent, the ill-fated “universal operating system” boldly promised and jointly developed by Apple and IBM back in the early 1990s. (Campbell had nothing to do with it; he re-joined Apple as a board member in 1997 after the NeXT reunification. Taligent was one of several pie-in-the-sky fiascos that left Apple in such desperate straits that they had to buy NeXT.) Wikipedia:

Pink was then spun off from Apple as a joint project known as Taligent. The original Apple team was expanded with the addition of a very small number of IBM engineers, as well as a new CEO from IBM, Joe Guglielmi (apparently to the distaste of many of the Apple people).

“In 1992, the earth shook: IBM and Apple clasped hands and pronounced themselves allies. From this union sprang Taligent, a small Cupertino, California, company that’s now developing nothing less than a universal operating system.” —Macworld, 1994

During its first year, IBM persuaded Taligent to replace its internally developed object-oriented microkernel, called Opus, with the microkernel that IBM was using as the base for IBM’s Workplace OS. The change in underlying technology had both positive and negative aspects. On the positive side, Pink would become a personality on top of the IBM Workplace OS. This would create easy migration paths between OS/2, AIX, Mac OS, and Pink by allowing any combination of operating system personalities to run simultaneously on a single computer. On the negative side, this created issues over how to integrate Taligent’s object-oriented device-driver model with Workplace OS’s procedural device-driver model.

The “positive side” was a total pipe dream.

The other previous Apple/IBM collaboration that springs to mind is the PowerPC platform. That was no fiasco, and even saw some good years, but ultimately ended badly. Just two years after Apple’s grand announcement of the G5 CPU, Apple announced it was switching to Intel processors.

Tim Cook Tells WSJ He Does 80 Percent of His Work on iPad ★

Daisuke Wakabayashi, reporting yesterday on the Apple/IBM team-up:

Apple Inc. Chief Executive Tim Cook says he does 80% of the work of running the world’s most valuable company on an iPad.

“There’s no reason why everyone shouldn’t be like that,” Mr. Cook said in an interview, explaining why Apple struck a partnership with International Business Machines Corp. to develop applications catered to big businesses, or enterprises. “Imagine enterprise apps being as simple as the consumer apps that we’ve all gotten used to. That’s the way it should be.”

I’m sure “80 percent” is a rough guess, perhaps even somewhat exaggerated in the iPad’s favor, but there’s a dogfooding aspect to Tim Cook being a heavy iPad user who uses it for actual work.

Here’s my question (prompted by this thread on Twitter): Does IBM CEO Ginni Rometty use an iPhone? I don’t think it’s a deal-breaker if she doesn’t, but I do think it matters if she does — it’s an “actions speak louder than words” thing. Commitment and vision start at the top.

Update: Perfect counterexample: Google chairman (and long-time CEO) Eric Schmidt admitting to still using a BlackBerry — a BlackBerry! — last year.

Update 2: Horace Dediu: “I received confirmation that she uses iPhone, iPad and Mac and has for several years.” So there we go: the CEO of IBM apparently uses iOS devices and a Mac.

Sue Wagner Joins Apple’s Board; Bill Campbell Retires ★

Apple PR:

“Sue is a pioneer in the financial industry and we are excited to welcome her to Apple’s board of directors,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We believe her strong experience, especially in M&A and building a global business across both developed and emerging markets, will be extremely valuable as Apple continues to grow around the world.”

“We conducted an exhaustive search for someone who would further strengthen our board’s breadth of talent and background, and we are delighted to have identified such an outstanding individual,” said Art Levinson, Apple’s chairman. “I’m confident that Sue is going to make an important and positive impact on our company.”

Makes me wonder if the Beats deal is the start of a trend toward larger acquisitions by Apple.

Bill Campbell’s relationship with Apple dates back to 1983, when he joined the company as vice president of Marketing. Next to Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Mike Markkula, Campbell is the longest-serving board member in the company’s history.

“Bill’s contributions to Apple are immeasurable and we owe him a huge debt of gratitude. On behalf of the board and the entire company, I want to thank him for being a leader, a mentor and a friend,” said Cook. “When Bill joined Apple’s board, the company was on the brink of collapse. He not only helped Apple survive, but he’s led us to a level of success that was simply unimaginable back in 1997.”

Apple share prices hovered around $0.80 (split-adjusted) in August 1997, when Campbell joined the board. They closed today at $93. Not a bad run for a board member.

Trip ‘Claim’ Chowdhry Prediction of the Week ★

Famed analyst Trip Chowdhry, two days ago:

IBM is only 2 days away from their earnings announcement, while AAPL is only 1.5 weeks away from their earnings announcement. The timing of this announcement makes us feel that IBM will very likely miss their revenue expectations and probably Apple may also miss their revenue expectations.

IBM’s actual results, today:

International Business Machines reported a second quarter boost in net income and revenue that topped Wall Street forecasts.

IBM reported non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $4.32 off revenue of $24.4 billion. Both numbers beat analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

(Thanks to Brian Resac. Also, no surprise that Trip Chowdhry thinks Apple is going to report a miss this quarter: he’s on the record as predicting that they’re going “to disappear” because they didn’t release a wristwatch last month.)

‘Hello There’ ★

Amir Mizroch, writing for the WSJ:

While layoffs at Microsoft were expected for some time, the size of the job cuts announced Thursday took some by surprise. Another surprise: the salutation of an email to all staff from Microsoft Executive Vice President Stephen Elop, outlining the rationale for the cuts.

“Hello There,” started Elop’s email to employees.

Hello there? Critics on social media seized on the opening as tone deaf.

Anyone else feel like maybe Stephen Elop should be one of the 18,000 layoffs?

Blogger Fined by French Court Because Negative Restaurant Review Was Too Prominent in Google ★

Greg Sterling, writing for Search Engine Land:

Doudet could appeal the decision but has decided not to because she did “not want to relive weeks of anguish,” according to the BBC.

There are two contexts in which this story can be analyzed: 1) the futility of trying to use the courts to attack or quash negative reviews and 2) European courts’ increasingly bold attempts to blunt the impact of or censor specific search results that are perceived to cause harm (whether or not the information at issue is truthful or factual).

On the first point the restaurant has gained much more unwanted attention for itself through the action and subsequent coverage. I wouldn’t be surprised now if it went out of business. However, the food and service appear to be mediocre; so perhaps it’s inevitable anyway.

To my American ears, this sounds absolutely crazy.

Mini-Microsoft: ‘Cut Once, Cut Deep, Cut Quickly’ ★

Mini-Microsoft on today’s Microsoft layoff announcement:

That’s why I hope that Cut Quickly happens. Without it, we’re back to our first layoff experience. If anything broke the back of this blog, it was the first big Microsoft layoff back in 2009. How? How could the realization of a step towards Mini-Microsoft do that? Because it was implemented so poorly, with constant worries and concerns and doubts about engaging in new ideas due to expectations those would be the easiest to trim during ongoing cut-backs. When was it over? When was the “all clear” signal given?

So if this truly drags on for a year: we need a new leader. This needs to be wrapped up by the end of July. 2014.

Charity: Waterworld ★

Mike Monteiro:

Did you know that almost a billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean drinking water? Every day, 5,000 kids die from water-related illnesses before they reach their fifth birthday. Which is bullshit. There are simple solutions like drilled wells, spring protections and BioSand filters that help provide clean water to communities around the world.

And the good people at charity: water are helping to make those solutions happen.

He’s trying to raise $10,000 for a truly great cause. I’m in.

The Last Hurrah for ‘At the Movies’ ★

Great piece by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky for The A.V. Club on co-hosting the final run of At the Movies, including an astute analysis of what made Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert so good at it.

Microsoft to Cut 18,000 Jobs, Including 12,500 From Nokia ★

Satya Nadella, in a company-wide memo (emphasis mine):

Of that total, our work toward synergies and strategic alignment on Nokia Devices and Services is expected to account for about 12,500 jobs, comprising both professional and factory workers. […]

Our workforce reductions are mainly driven by two outcomes: work simplification as well as Nokia Devices and Services integration synergies and strategic alignment. […]

We will realize the synergies to which we committed when we announced the acquisition last September. […]

Seems like a lot of “synergies”. This style of communication is like reading a foreign language to me — I don’t understand what most of it means.

Update: Classic 30 Rock sketch on “synergy”. (Via Pavan Rajam.)